It’s not just Huawei…

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Australian politicians have recently started pandering to their Chinese constituents by embracing one of the largest social media platforms in the world: WeChat.

However, this political cajoling has not been without its dangers.

So what is WeChat?

WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose social media application that was launched back in 2011. It was founded by Tencent – a Chinese company – and has been heavily subsidised by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since its founding.

It’s not just censorship – sometimes [the CCP] promote[s] particular issues so it’s a way of controlling public debate.

This is exactly what happened back in 2014 when Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests were censored by WeChat.

Moreover, WeChat’s T&C’s outline that for those who are considered part of the ‘People’s Republic of China,’ it is illegal to use WeChat for any political purposes that are not explicitly aligned with the aims of the CCP.

The CCP’s Central Propaganda Department, government agencies, and private companies employ hundreds of thousands or even millions of people to monitor, censor, and manipulate online content. Material on a range of issues is systematically censored, with the most censored topics in 2017 involving breaking news related to health and safety, media censorship, official wrongdoing, foreign affairs, the reputation of the party or officials, or civil society activism.

WeChat has the potential to interfere with Australia’s domestic elections by filtering, manipulating, and erasing content that is inconsistent with China’s foreign policy.

In fact, as Fergus Ryan, an analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute writes:

Because WeChat is one of the main conduits for Chinese-language news, censorship controls help Beijing to ensure that news sources using the app for distribution report only news that serves the CCP’s strategic objectives.

What was once only found in Orwellian fiction is now playing out before our very eyes.